Advice Request Second opinion on this windows 11 hardening guide

[Frogish]

Account Suspended

Hi!
I would appreciate of someone with a bit of experience could share their opinion on this guide i found while googling. Is it worth following every step? Is it up to date and so on.

Thanks in advance

 

[Back3]

I think W11 is relatively secure and that hardening it like that is too much. An antivirus+OSArmor+ Sandboxie+Voodooshield+ Windows Firewall Control is too much. If you add all the other tweaks, well, good luck!
An antivirus with OSArmor or Sandboxie or Voodooshield or Hard_Configurator with Macrium , a secure dns, an adblocker like Ublock Origin or Adguard are good enough to keep you secure. If something goes wrong, you'll be able to pinpoint the issue and correct it easily.
OSArmor for instance has 4 profiles of protection or hardening that you can experiment with.....
It's important to maintain a good balance of usability and security.

 

[Freki123]

Voodooshield isn't free anymore (only a free 15days trial). Before you follow the guide and find it out the hard way

 

[cruelsister]

Account Suspended

Hi!
I would appreciate of someone with a bit of experience could share their opinion on this guide i found while googling. Is it worth following every step? Is it up to date and so on.

Thanks in advance

One must always be careful of guides such as the one you cited. Often the author may be conversant with with forms of defense against malware without really understanding malware itself. For example quoting from the article:

"To see the Digital Signatures of a file, right click on a file, choose Properties, then Digital Signature tab. This reveals the company that signed the file. Then click on the Name of Signer, then Details button. It should say "This digital signature is OK". If it does not say that, then the file has been modified - discard it. Check that the signature is signed by the correct company name. This also is a guarentee that the file has not been modified.

The Edge browser has SmartScreen. It is a reputation checker. SmartScreen looks at many things and it revokes trust when a download has done bad things on a user's computer. So if the file has a signature, it can revoke trust of anything signed with that signature if the signature has a bad reputation.."

The corollary to this statement then is that a file that states "This digital signature is OK" would be fine to run. However this is far, far from the case. As an example, please see something in this video (just a few seconds at the 0:40 point):


Also this particular file (among many others) is totally ignored by something else that this article suggests: "Turn UAC to the max". Perhaps at one time this was helpful, but I assure you that this is no longer the case.

 

[oldschool]

Many of these guides are quite detailed and complicated for most users. The easiest, totally free option is Simple Windows Hardening tool. Use Edge browser, keep your system up to date and you're good to go.

And remember: Stay safe, not paranoid!

 

[ForgottenSeer 69673]

Of course, my guide is the best!!!
1. Windows 11 Enterprise FREE
2. Appguard with tweaks
3. Shadow Defender
4. Good VPN
5. Nice white listing firewall. Like Firewall Application Blocker in white list mode FREE
6. Privacy cleaner of choice.

 

[Victor M]

I found that guide helpful. It explains what security controls there are in Windows and makes good use of it. For example the firewall section is quite detailed. And it has a Win Defender anti-exploit profile for Chrome. Too bad the scripts are not free, but everybody's got to make a living.

 

[ForgottenSeer 95367]

Account Suspended

Hi!
I would appreciate of someone with a bit of experience could share their opinion on this guide i found while googling. Is it worth following every step? Is it up to date and so on.

Thanks in advance

That Windows Hardening guide has been around for a long time; it was started back in the W7 era. It is comprehensive. If you have the inclination to do everything in it, then your OS will be more secure. It helps to do each of the steps in a VM to see if anything is broken. The author used to sell a CD with all the scripts on it. Is it practical? Obviously most here would say "no," but that is up to the user to decide. If anything it will be a learning experience. You will definitely learn alot.

 

[Bumblebee Uncle]

That is a good guide and you can learn a lot. I would say listen to @cruelsister 's recommendation and then learn and apply what you can See what works for you.